Tiger Woods is a known jokester, but his latest funny-guy moment has sent the online golf world into a full-on frenzy.
During Tuesday night’s TGL broadcast between Jupiter Links and New York Golf Club on ESPN, Woods caught up with SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt for a pregame interview. Woods, who is still rehabbing a back injury, is not playing for his Links squad this season (at least not yet), necessitating a sub.
Enter: Akshay Bhatia, one of the hottest young golfers on the PGA Tour. At the age of 23, Bhatia already has two wins on the PGA Tour and finished tied for third in last year’s The Players Championship. He’s also a favorite of Tiger’s, having been invited to the past two Hero World Challenge tournaments, Woods’ 20-man bash in the Bahamas played each December.
Bhatia made his TGL debut for the Jupiter Links on Tuesday, and in Woods’ pregame interview, the 15-time major winner had an interesting nickname for the young star.
Here is Tiger Woods calling new Jupiter Links TGL member Akshay Bhatia “Ashtray” in an interview with Scott Van Pelt. pic.twitter.com/2Kf0lBumb5
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 14, 2026
Answering a question from Van Pelt about how Jupiter Links plans to turn it around from an abysmal debut season in 2025, Woods said this:
“Well, I don’t think we can play as bad as we did. There’s only one way to go, is up. We were Bad News Bears and we don’t want to be the Bad News Bears 2. No more sequels here,” Woods joked. “We’ve got Ashtray, er, Akshay as part of our team and he brings that youth, that excitement…” the superstar golfer said before getting into other members of his team.
This is far from the first time Woods has let a naughty joke slip on a live broadcast. Two years ago, after out-driving his playing partner and friend Justin Thomas during the Genesis Invitational, Woods was caught slipping Thomas a tampon. The suggestion being, Justin Thomas hit it like a girl. That incident drew the ire of many in the golf community, and Woods subsequently apologized.
So far, the reaction to this joke seems pretty subdued. One would imagine Woods wouldn’t say something like that on national television if Bhatia wasn’t already on board with the nickname. But now it’s fully out there, and it’ll be hard for Akshay Bhatia to put that genie back in the bottle. Or, that cigarette back in the pack, as it were.